


All For One, One For All

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Series: Get Out of the Fridge [13]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Baggage, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8368360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: In which Kix has had enough, even if it costs him his berth mate. Or, Kix hates miscommunication and avoidance. Anakin gets dragged into it.





	

Kix understood that the 501st had killed more Jedi than any other unit. He understood that most of the deaths had not even been combatants. What he could not understand was why Torrent Company specifically, and those that had dual insignia for the 501st and 332nd, were failing to progress in their therapy goals.

Then, after the fifth time the General caught him, well after hours, to ask how this member or that member of Torrent was, he started to understand a little more. And he decided he had reached the end of people failing to communicate.

All of Torrent's survivors were pulled into a single room, and then Kix commed the General. "Sir, I need you in the observation booth outside treatment room nine, please." The please was a courtesy. The medical command in the words was solid steel.

Kix entered the room with his fellow soldiers, no data pad in hand this time. He just went to the forward, central position and watched his brothers. Most were sketching idly, and he didn't need to see to know.

They had taken to drawing the faces of their victims, aching to know the names and incapable of asking the one person who might help them.

"Vod'e, we're going to try this a different way," Kix said, hoping the General had gotten in place, as long as he had waited to actually start talking.

Anakin knew his medic's command tone and he had made haste to where he'd been summoned, worrying over who might be in the kind of shape that called him to an observation booth. Seeing Torrent there, with Kix just starting to speak, had his head tipping slightly. What had gone wrong now, what... Not that he was likely to be able to help, none of them were letting him actually be there for them in more than the most distant fashions -- but they were his men, his friends and his responsibility, so he parked himself where he needed to be.

Jesse looked at Kix, then back down at his tablet, going back to filling the details of the Kel Dor Jedi Knight he had come across in the halls near their Archives. She had pleaded with him, in his head, to remember who he was.

He'd killed her anyway, alongside his small squad.

Kix cleared his throat, then spoke again. "Not a one of you has made near as much progress in getting back to fighting shape as the 327th, and they showed up without a single vod older than fourth wave batches," he pointed out. "Because their entire officer and non-com staff took the quick way out.

"And I know you all went inside the Temple. I understand that. What I don't understand is why you're letting those deaths go wasted, instead of picking up your armor and getting back into the fight for their sakes!"

"What's left to fight?" Coric demanded.

Kix actively rolled his eyes at the man. "Vod, you really think the fighting's all done when the Republic is sitting here with belly and throat both open for anyone to cut open?"

Anakin blinked, watching as a trace of actual animation crossed the faces of most of his men, some of the terrible listlessness that had ridden them fading a very little, and hoped. He hadn't had anything concrete to offer them, not with his knowing that the entire Separatist leadership was dead... but it wasn't just the Seps in the galaxy, either. Kix was right about that.

"So?" It was Attie that replied, his head tipping slightly up at Kix in the front of the room. "Might have missed it, sir, but everything the longnecks ever fed us about what we were intended for was one giant ocean-damned lie. And they let him use us that away."

"You think our General had the truth of it?" Kix asked, pointedly. "You really think he knew how many lies were in that mix?"

Several men flinched violently at that, but it was Joc who all but glared at Kix for saying that.

"Kriff no, sir! Our General was as used as we were, both in the war and… and… " The man deflated, incapable of saying it, so Kix did.

"When the units marched on their Jedi, he was there too, just as karked over as the rest of the Vod'e," the medic said. "So why, in the whole galaxy, are you all being so damned harsh to him?"

/Kriff it, Kix,/ Anakin thought, his eyes narrowing as Kix tackled them about him -- that wasn't the important thing here, damn it, finding some way to get through to _them_ was -- but it... Joc's instant, sharp defense had painted a soothing cream across what the ten-days of being pushed away from them had done. Rex said it was because they didn't know how to deal with his failure, with that he'd been as susceptible as they were to being controlled and directed... what would they tell Kix? 

"He's coping with enough, Sir!" Ross all but shouted at the medic, with an ugly slew of agreement behind him. 

"He doesn't need to cope with us being broken, when he's looking out for all of the Vod'e!" Zere added, too angry to even add the 'sir' Kix merited.

Kix listened as more comments along those lines radiated out of the survivors, every single one of them incensed at Kix's words, and all of them dead-set on protecting their general from their pain. 

Anakin swore under his breath at the Force-damned self-sacrificing idiocy of _vod'e_ , even while he couldn't stay on his feet from what his boys were saying. That... that was a side of things he hadn't considered, that they were trying to protect him -- he should have, they always did that in the field even when they shouldn't -- from this... but he didn't need to be protected, not when they needed help! 

What was a Jedi _for_ , if not to help and defend!? 

Kix waited for them to wind down, and slammed back at them. "You'd rather leave our General all on his own, coping with the fact he turned on his own, just like all of you, than let him see this?" he asked. "Are you all sniffing paint these days, thinking that's a good idea? Did any of you stop and ask if he's going to be able to be okay? Kriff's sake, he had to fight our Commander there! You think that's something he can work past on his own?"

"Do you really expect us to add to that hurt? You really think any one of us can handle adding any more pain to a _jetii_?!" Jesse demanded of him, raw and pained at those words coming out of Kix's mouth. "We killed those who shouldn't even be in combat! We carry their faces, every day and night, Kix! How can you expect us to push that in his face, when he is dealing with being broken and controlled too?!"

That, pouring out of Jesse, the feel of him from so few meters away so raw and pained (and betrayed, but Kix and Jesse had shared a berth as long as he'd known them) cut through Anakin even before he was done speaking -- well, shouting, some of it. 

As though Anakin wouldn't take in every bit of their pain, every one of those memories, if it would actually help them? If it wouldn't just leave them with formless nightmares that would be worse than the knowing? As though he wouldn't do it gladly? It -- he would a thousand times rather have their pain and grief and even rage than be shut away from them. He made himself get back to his feet, get a breath, and tried to decide if he just needed to get in there already.

"Answer me one question, Jesse. Or any of you." Kix looked around at each man's face. "Who has always been the first person you see in medical, when you get hurt? Who is the one person I can't touch with bacta, until he knows you lot have all been treated?"

One after another, the men dropped their eyes, all the hostility pouring at Kix falling away, as they finally got the point.

Well, no, Anakin was rarely the first -- he was usually out in the battlefield until everything was dealt with -- but he had to admit that Kix was completely right about that last bit. He wasn't much of a healer, but he did do what he could, and of course they came first -- he had the Force, he could handle what he got into. He took a slow breath, trying to rearrange what he'd been thinking since they'd started shutting him out in light of what they'd said, what he'd felt from them. It... his men were ridiculous, but knowing they were trying to protect him, that... that helped even more than he had expected. 

Anakin slipped out of the booth and headed for the treatment room doors, unwilling to be separated from them any longer. 

Kix eyed the door, and sighed as every single man jumped to their feet to come to attention. He felt Jesse's eyes rake over him in utter betrayal; their berth was going to be as cold as Hoth tonight, but Kix had felt the need to do it.

"Sir," Jesse said, taking charge of the group.

"At ease," Anakin told them, shaking his head once as he gestured, before he moved towards Jesse directly. Coric and Appo might both rank him, but Jesse was the one that had been most vocal, so. "You want to help me, Jesse?" he paused just long enough to get the nod, then went on before he could speak, "Then _let me be with you_. Let me know that I didn't lose the men that mean the most in the world to me when I screwed up enough to give him time to do this to us -- _can it!_

"I screwed up. That I can deal with. What I can't... is there being flipping parsecs between us when we're standing in the same room. I need you, brothers." 

Jesse, his spine ramrod straight in the way the oldest batches could manage and the younger ones only hoped to emulate, struggled with words, with the crashing down of his beliefs and wishes to protect his Jedi… and then he moved, coming forward enough to reach out and reach for Anakin's shoulder in the Vod'e greeting.

"Sorry, Sir. Didn't see it quite that way."

Anakin watched him -- then there was that hand, tight on his shoulder, and he latched on in return... before he stepped in closer and wrapped his other hand behind Jesse's back, holding him in tighter. Not quite a full embrace, but enough, his eyes fixed on Jesse's. 

"...I know that, now," he said softly, well aware every vod in the room could hear him perfectly well. "Thank you, for trying to take care of me. All of you." 

Jesse drew in a deep breath, then let it go, shaky and harsh. "Sir… you're our General. Our _jetii_. It's bred into us to take care of you… and then this all happened. We feel like we are nothing but lies, a bomb from the beginning, and that nothing we ever did or can do will ever make up for it."

"Yeah, that," Hil said softly, looking at his sketch pad.

Anakin shook his head, looking at Jesse and knowing just how deep a pain that had to be. "You're _not_ just lies, Jesse. The Jedi that originally asked for you -- he didn't intend you to be a weapon against us. That that got perverted and twisted by our enemies... that isn't his fault, and it's not yours, either. 

"Attie, Hil, Appo... I'm pretty sure the people whose lives all of you saved would have some words to say about the value of what you've done. Mmm? They didn't know it was all a trap. They just know they're alive because of the _vod'e_." 

Kix settled back against the wall, letting them take it from there. He'd opened the gate, and now they were finding their own way toward healing.

"What do we do now, Sir? We're soldiers, and it seems like the war left us behind," Zere said, worrying at his stylus.

"Right now," Anakin said softly, turning loose of Jesse slowly to move to Zere instead, looking at him, "we heal. We let the politicians figure out what they're doing -- and we make certain that we have people ready to respond if any Sep worlds decide to keep pushing it, or the Hapans decide we look easy to beat down now. Or some of the cartels decide to pick off worlds of ours. 

"Kix is right. The galaxy's gotten a taste of war, and we still have people that are defenseless without us. Longer range... I have some _thoughts_ about planets like Zygerria, and the ones that trade with them." He knew his eyes were glittering, but he didn't think any of his men would mind that. 

They looked at him sharply, and all their focus settled on his words, not the sketches, not the pain, not the cracks in their psyches.

"We'll be here, sir," Appo said at that. He'd heard about that mission, knew it had been one that the Captain had gone to the ranges over, set new accuracy and speed records for them all to beat in his anger.

"We won't fail you," Coric promised.

"Brothers," Anakin told them, firmly, "you never have."


End file.
